David G. Hawkes
Head of Special Litigations
World Bank Group Integrity Vice Presidency

David G. Hawkes is a German senior prosecutor specialized in anti-corruption and complex white collar crime investigations.  Since December 2007 he leads the Special Litigation Unit in the World Bank Group’s Integrity Vice Presidency (INT) in Washington DC.  The Special Litigation Unit with a dozen dedicated attorneys and paralegals from six continents is the first of its kind in an international organization.  It represents INT’s findings from investigations across the globe in the World Bank Group’s sanctions proceedings, liaises with judiciaries and investigative agencies and ensures that INT’s investigations produce evidence that meets the required standards.  Previously, Mr. Hawkes was the head of INT’s Africa Regional Team where he managed the Bank Group’s fraud and corruption investigations in more than 45 countries in sub-Saharan Africa and led investigations into several large cross-regional cases. 

Before joining INT in 2005 Mr. Hawkes served as a prosecutor and later as a deputy head in the anti-corruption department of the Staatsanwaltschaft Berlin (Berlin Office of the Prosecutor) and as an official in the Federal Ministry of Justice in Berlin.  On behalf of the Berlin Office of the Prosecutor and then as a Senior Officer with the World Bank Group, Mr. Hawkes has managed multidisciplinary and multinational teams of prosecutors, attorneys, detectives, investigators, forensic accountants and other specialists in very large as well as in highly sensitive investigations on the ground in more than 20 countries and as a unit head in Headquarters.  Mr. Hawkes has contributed in a leading role to judiciary reform projects and trained judges, prosecutors, police detectives, tax investigators, and internal auditors from Europe, Asia, South America and Africa.  Since the establishment of Germany’s first Risk and Fraud Management MBA course at the Steinbeis Hochschule in Berlin, Mr. Hawkes has served there as a part-time lecturer.  For his Business Ethics and Transnational White Collar Crime Investigations classes he received the Risk and Fraud Management Institute’s Best Teacher Award 2007.

Mr. Hawkes graduated from the University of Heidelberg (Erste Juristische Staatsprüfung/First State Law Degree).  He completed his Referendariat and the Second State Law Degree (Zweite Juristische Staatsprüfung) in Berlin and holds a doctorate (Dr.iur/J.S.D.) in Administrative Environmental Safety Law (Gene Technology Law) from Freiburg University (Germany).  Before moving to the USA, Mr. Hawkes served as an elected Deputy Federal Chairman of the Deutsch-Indische Gesellschaft e.V. (Indo-German Society) in Stuttgart/Germany, one of the largest bi-national cultural societies in Germany.